Tuesday, April 29, 2014

By Alexander "Z" GroshongLonnie Holley
is an incredibly talented and versatile artist who expresses himself through
sculpture, music, painting, and almost everything he experiences. He has
overcome unthinkable hardships in his life but has managed to come out on top, maintaining
his own unique and positive outlook on life. On our first day of work in the
studio, Lonnie said, “I want to learn as much as possible from you, but at the
same time, I want you to learn from me.” I was thrilled to be in charge of his
first project at Paulson Bott Press.

Lonnie makes
art out of anything and everything within his reach. One day, he went down to
the nearby train tracks for some inspiration and came back with an assortment
of debris, including an old tarp, tiny metal scraps from trains, and slabs of
pale cement. When he set these materials down on the studio table, I felt a
little anxious and wondered what he could possibly make out of them. But within
minutes, he had come up with multiple concepts and created an intriguing
sculpture of a boat and a face. He is a masterful improviser.

Lonnie Holley, The Things of Life (To See or Not to See), 2013
Color aquatint etching. Published by Paulson Bott Press

Intaglio was a
new medium for him, yet he was able to embrace the various techniques
seamlessly. By layering three-dimensional objects onto the softground plates, Lonnie
found a familiar way to construct prints. His sculptures bend themselves
perfectly to this printed form, allowing him to create work that remains true
to his vision. His music shares improvisation and invention as well.You can listen here.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

When Hernan contacted Paulson Bott Press to
purchase a print by Tauba Auerbach, I took the opportunity to invite him to
make etchings. For many years I had been enthralled by Hernan’s paintings
and extremely curious about the man responsible for many of the “Renaissance in
Detroit” stories I had read.

Hernan grew up in Florida and became widely
celebrated as a Miami artist. His more recent move to Detroit was motivated by his
need for escape and discovery. These same desires are evoked in his
paintings. Detroit has become a lonely, abandoned city,
now haunted by the ghosts of America’s failed promises, the perfect muse for
Bas and his depictions of boyish exploration, supernatural
landscapes, death, and rebirth.

Hernan Bas, The Hallucinations of Poets (dandelion), 2010;

Acrylic on linen

Hernan can push paint. The skill with
which he draws and paints is astounding. His bold palette and confident
mark-making is fast and detailed.

He pushes boundaries as well. He breaks
through to the other side, chases pleasures here, and digs treasures there. His embrace of sexuality and a queer perspective is bold and
unapologetic.

Hernan Bas, Comus in a Drunken Stupor, 2013; Color Etching

Hernan and I came of age in the same decade, and
I connect with his work in the same way that I connect with the post-punk, alt
rock mood of the nineties. My dream dates were once Layne Staley and Kurt
Cobain, and there lived in me a deep longing for a life on the fringe, a
feeling of alienation, a rejection of some idea I had of the mainstream. It was
all "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.”

Hernan Bas, Sketches for prints, 2013 Graphite on vellum

It is no surprise that Hernan has been
influenced by the writings of Joris Karl-Huysmans, who first defined the Decadent
Art Movement. Karl-Huysmans' book Against Nature
illustrated disgust with modern life and deep pessimism. As art historian Otto Urban put it in an interview in F Newsmagazine, "there was much that that decadence
introduced for the first time, above all themes that had been taboo (sexuality,
Satanism and Anarchism)." In Urban's words, "The portrayal of the horror and madness of the modern world became a key theme of Decadence. Decadence no longer had utopian visions of change, but only a grimace of ridicule and a longing for isolation."

Hernan in the Paulson Bott Press studio, 2013

Yet Hernan’s paintings have a redemptive power
to remind us of our utopian dreams. Hernan takes this loneliness and spins it
into gold. He is the contemporary artist whose self-imposed solitude inspired the alchemists of old.After
long hours in our studio, Hernan returned to his hotel and continued to work. He’d
arrive back the next morning with a fresh group of drawings to inspire his prints,
playfully experimenting with every technique intaglio has to offer. The resulting body of work reflects an ongoing
transformation between nocturnal longings and the glories of a new day.